Posts Tagged ‘South Korea’

Two Korean former sex slaves demanded the resignation of an outspoken Japanese mayor and canceled a meeting with him Friday for justifying Japan’s wartime practice of forcing tens of thousands of Asian women into prostitution for its military.

Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, also co-leader of a nationalist party, enraged Japanese neighbors last week by saying the use of so-called comfort women, mainly from South Korea, China and the Philippines, in frontline brothels before and during World War II was considered necessary then to maintain military discipline and give soldiers relief.

Hashimoto told reporters later Friday that the cancellation was “very unfortunate” but that he respects their feelings. He said he had hoped to show his sympathy over their wartime sufferings as sex slaves, and would have apologized for hurting their feelings because of his remarks that he said were misrepresented by the media.

Supporters of the two women in their 80s, Kim Bok-dong and Kil Won-ok, said there would be nothing to talk about because Hashimoto has showed no remorse over his remarks. They suspected he may have wanted to use the meeting — to be broadcast live on TV — to appear friendly with them and calm public criticism, the supporters told journalists.

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Police are seeking warrants to arrest two Thai women and eight South Korean men after a 17-year-old girl was rescued from a brothel in Seoul on Saturday.

Phiangjai Phanplado, 43, the aunt of the victim who is accused of luring her niece into selling sex in South Korea early last month, is among those for whom police have sought warrants.

Anti-Human Trafficking Division (AHTD) chief Pol Maj Gen Chawalit Sawaengphuet said two suspects _ another Thai woman and a Korean man _ were captured on an Immigration Bureau camera at the airport as they took the girl on board a plane to Seoul.

The other seven suspects were found to have been involved with the same flesh trade gang.

Al-Jazeera reported that some 200,000 South Korean youths run away from home annually, with many of them descending into the business of sex, according to a report by Seoul’s municipal government. A separate survey suggested that half of female runaways become prostitutes.

All these statistics fly in the face of South Korea’s stellar image as a society that consistently produces brilliant, hard-working, motivated students and technocrats. However, it is exactly that academic pressure (along with other family issues) that drives many of these teens onto the streets.

“No one ever told me it was wrong to prostitute myself, including my schoolteachers,” a runaway named Yu-ja told Al-Jazeera.

“I wish someone had told me. Girls should be taught that from an early age in class here in South Korea, but they aren’t.”

Not only is South Korea home to child and teen prostitution, but South Korean men are also driving such illicit trade in foreign countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, according to the Korean Institute of Criminology, based on surveys conducted in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and the Philippines.

Korean prostitution rings span the United States, with many of the women treated as de facto slaves by their pimp-masters.Credits: ICE/DHS

According to court documents, Moonseop Kim posted an advertisement on the Internet offering Korean female escort services in September 2012. Undercover officers with the Biloxi police responded to the ad and conducted a sting operation which resulted in the arrest of the 54-year-old Kim and a Korean female.

ICE investigators subsequently discovered Kim was connected to a multi-state prostitution ring operating out of Atlantic City, N.J., and that Kim and the female had both overstayed their visas and were illegally in the country.

“Criminals who sexually exploit illegal aliens for financial gain often use intimidation or force to threaten these vulnerable women into compliance,” said ICE’s New Orleans Special Agent in Charge Raymond R. Parmer Jr.

\ A closed brothel near Youngdeungpo station in Seoul, an area that was once a large red light district. Citizens pass by after a police crackdown in May 2011. (by Shin So-young, staff photographer)

The debate over the 2004 Special Law on Prostitution is heating up once again after a court requested a constitutionality review on its provisions that punish women for sex work.

Though there is widespread agreement that the punishments on women selling sex should be eliminated, different camps are offering very different rationales. Legal scholars welcomed the review request, which echoes their own belief about a minimal state presence in private issues. But feminists are concerned that an unconstitutionality ruling could lead to the full-scale legalization of prostitution. The debate looks poised to rage on while the Constitutional Court deliberates over its review.

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A court has requested a review of the conformity between a provision of the Special Anti-Sex Trafficking Act and the Constitution. The Constitutional Court will deliver its ruling within 180 days. Though the request is about the unconstitutionality of punishing prostitutes, the provision also contains punishment for their customers. Thus the Constitutional Court’s decision could affect the anti-prostitution law.Prostitution is technically illegal in Korea but many people know what massage parlors with large shingles on large roads in Seoul`s posh Gangnam district are for. Few countries make sex easily available as Korea. Laws are very strict but the sex trade is widespread, which is often blasted as hypocritical. Just a few unlucky perpetrators get caught. Countries have different laws on the sex trade based on their history and culture. Even nations that allows sex between adults based on an individual`s decision, do not punish sex trade, and manage where and how sex should take place must prevent other crimes such as sex trafficking, harassment and exploitation and keep their sexual culture intact.

Two years after the U.S. State Department cited Korean “juicy bars” for suspected human trafficking, U.S. Forces Korea is promoting a video acknowledging that the bars routinely patronized by thousands of American soldiers encourage the sexual exploitation of the young hostesses who work there.

A public service video recently posted on the YouTube page of USFK’s Public Affairs Office states unequivocally that “buying overpriced drinks in a juicy bar supports the human trafficking industry, a form of modern-day slavery.”

Yet American commanders continue to allow U.S. servicemembers to patronize the bars as long as the establishments have not been caught directly engaging in prostitution or human trafficking.

Two years after the U.S. State Department cited Korean “juicy bars” for suspected human trafficking, U.S. Forces Korea is promoting a video acknowledging that the bars routinely patronized by thousands of American soldiers encourage the sexual exploitation of the young hostesses who work there.

A public service video recently posted on the YouTube page of USFK’s Public Affairs Office states unequivocally that “buying overpriced drinks in a juicy bar supports the human trafficking industry, a form of modern-day slavery.”

Yet American commanders continue to allow U.S. servicemembers to patronize the bars as long as the establishments have not been caught directly engaging in prostitution or human trafficking.

USFK commander Gen. James D. Thurman declined a request to explain whether commanders are sending American soldiers a mixed message regarding the juicy bars, which are found clustered in seedy entertainment districts near some of the U.S. military’s larger bases in Korea.

The bars are primarily staffed by Philippine women who are imported to flirt with servicemembers and encourage them to buy expensive juice drinks – usually about $10 each – in exchange for more time to talk and flirt.

A 2009 Stars and Stripes investigation found that girls who fall short of juice-sale quotas are sometimes forced by club owners to prostitute themselves to make up the revenue difference – a practice known as “bar fining.”

Leaflets advertising “full salon” service were handed out to passersby at night on Dec. 2 in a red-light district in Busan. “Full salon” service implies a customer can drink with a hostess and then have sex for money in the same building. By Song Bong-geun

After the sex trade law went into effect on Sept. 23, 2004, the number of old-style red-light districts in Korea decreased, but prostitution has taken on new forms and began popping up in areas where people live and send their children to school.

Now prostitutes practice their trade in room salons, massage parlors and officetels, dual purpose buildings used for both commercial and residential purposes. These new setups allow pimps to more discretely arrange sex for money.

A team of JoongAng Ilbo reporters investigated how these prostitution places are operating in the country’s major cities, including Seoul, Busan, Gwangju and Ulsan, in November.

On Nov. 2, at a red-light district near Yeongdeungpo Station, western Seoul, one brothel was under renovation. “That one is pretty popular among customers. That’s how they have the money to remodel,” a nearby merchant told the JoongAng Ilbo.